Another magic bullet shot down.
I understand the nutraceutical industry jumping all over this sort
of thing, and I even sort of understand the general public falling
for the hype. What I don't understand is the medical professionals
who buy in to it instead of finding better ways to motivate
patients to do those things that we know work: better overall diet
and more exercise..

victor shabanahM.D.

05/13/14

You can not go wrong if your main reliance on food(greens&fruits) is your main plan for wellness. I also
have to admit there are 5 basic supplements that are critical: omega3,vitamin D,Vitamin C, vitamin
Bcomplex,and probiotic.

Linda Meneken, Physical Therapist

05/13/14

Well stated Dr. Sorsby!.

james furrows, md

05/13/14

This study did nothing to diminish the well established
health and wellness properties of trans-resveratrol. As a
cell biologist and researcher who has done many trials
and in vitro studies of this compound it is evident that
Resveratrol possesses a myriad of biochemical,
endocrinological, proteomic, epigenetic, and both
cellular and extra-cellular effects that related directly to
the attenuation of the symptomatology, and progression
of many diseases. A simple google scholar or pubmed
search will return over 100,000 papers, studies, and
investigations of Resveratrol, the vast majority of which
elucidate its beneficial effects on Type 2 Diabetes and
other metabolic disorders, cardiovascular disease, many
forms of cancer and fibrosis, and the conditions
associated with ageing and obesity. Time Magazine
recently names Dr Sinclair, the scientist who discovered
its ability to activate the NAD+ dependent sirtuins, as
one of their 100 Most Influential men. To blithely
dismiss resveratrol as you are doing is hardly
professional or scientific..

james furrows, md

05/13/14

This study did nothing to diminish the well established
health and wellness properties of trans-resveratrol. As a
cell biologist and researcher who has done many trials
and in vitro studies of this compound it is evident that
Resveratrol possesses a myriad of biochemical,
endocrinological, proteomic, epigenetic, and both
cellular and extra-cellular effects that related directly to
the attenuation of the symptomatology, and progression
of many diseases. A simple google scholar or pubmed
search will return over 100,000 papers, studies, and
investigations of Resveratrol, the vast majority of which
elucidate its beneficial effects on Type 2 Diabetes and
other metabolic disorders, cardiovascular disease, many
forms of cancer and fibrosis, and the conditions
associated with ageing and obesity. Time Magazine
recently names Dr Sinclair, the scientist who discovered
its ability to activate the NAD+ dependent sirtuins, as
one of their 100 Most Influential men. To blithely
dismiss resveratrol as you are doing is hardly
professional or scientific..

Joshua Carson

05/13/14

Just as the cause of cardiovascular disease is multifactorial, so is its prevention. Manipulating any one
factor is unlikely to have any meaningful effect.
Smoking cessation, a healthy balanced diet, adequate physical activity, prevention of the development of
diabetes and hypertension (which starts at birth,) as well as mitigating factors, such as anti-oxidants, all
play a role.
Looking at a single population of those already over the age of 65 hardly tells us much about anything,
except this particular population.
The medical community is all too willing to embrace "magic bullets" when they are marketed by the
pharmaceutical industry. Witness the recent "proclamation" that 50% of adult Americans should be
prescribed statins, which is a boon to profits, while at the same time very little is done about the root
cause of the problem: a nation raised on fast food, a sedentary lifestyle, and dependency upon the
allopathic system to provide "a pill for that."
Summarily dismissing the benefits of moderate consumption of red wine and cocoa derivatives based
upon this study accomplishes nothing, except, of course, pointing the compass needle, yet again, to
prescription drugs..

raul guillermo lopez valle

05/13/14

I rise my cup for this false lie. Rest in peace..

MD-PCP

05/13/14

No matter what biological effects it might have. Extremely high dose
(non-physiological)achieved by supplement can have detrimental
effects, like vit E or A. My suggestion: if you do not have any weird
or untreatable diseases, stick to healthy diet and exercise..

WebSci

05/14/14

Among other serious flaws, a huge fallacy in this study is the claim that the subjects consumed a diet
“rich in Resveratrol”. It is well known that red wine is not a good source of this compound. The more
concentrated varieties, not the ones consumed in this study, have less than 5mg per bottle of
Resveratrol. The average Resveratrol supplement contains 20 times this amount. Transmax, the
supplement used in most of the human trials that show very positive health effects, contains 100 times
the amount in a bottle of red wine. The researchers are not being honest or ethical in their conclusions,
probably because the study was funded by a major pharmaceutical company whose products are
threatened by a safe and effective natural alternative that they are unable to monopolize via a patent.
http://www.touchendocrinology.com/articles/resveratrol-management-diabetes-and-its-downstream-
pathologies?page=0,1.

james cerullo

05/14/14

The sample was listed as 65 and up. I doubt that heart disease
waits that long to start. What was their heart health at the
beginning? Too many studies are deliberately set up to fail. The
sugar industry sponsored several studies with failure as a goal
going back to the cyclamate study in the late 60's or early 70's.
They also funded Prof. Meyer of Harvard to publish his studies
saying sugar was OK. Find out who gains by this study and you
might have a better idea of the researcher's goal. Drug companies
have been fighting health food products for years because they cut
into their low potency- high cost "vitamin" sales..

DC Howey, MD, FACE

05/14/14

Whoa! Take a breath.
This is an
observational study
that's interesting
but not definitive.
Well-designed,
randomized and
controlled, and
adequately powered
human clinical
trials are the gold
standard for
changing the
pharmacopoeia. The
nutriceutical
industry doesn't
need such. Please
don't go down Linus
Pauling's route with
Vitamin C. BTW, I
recall that Linus
Pauling was on the
cover of Time, also.
To paraphrase,
&amp;quot;this
is a drug that does
a lot of stuff to a
lot of
systems.&amp;quot;
Come on, folks that
will never pass
muster with FDA or
EMEA. We need a
mechanism, a
pathway, and a
molecule that sticks
around for awhile.
As to the
pharmaceutical
industry, they don't
care about
trans-whatever. If
they care, they're
looking for a
mechanism and a
better molecule to
do the job. They
don't have the time,
inclination or the
funds to waste
funding a study like
this regardless of
the outcome.
Continuing to work
on a weak agonist
like trans-whatever
only creates a
negative database
that makes it harder
to fund research on
this in the future..

Resveratrol has been shown to have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory
properties.Antioxidants scavenge free radical in the body which is the
culprit inducing most of diseases.In the other hand,resveratrol is
rapidly metabolized and stays in low concentration in serum that
because we are not going to get it enough from diet or supplement to
have any deleterious effects.Nontherless,hitherto,resveratrol is at
least useful in its scavenger property..

Sarah Graef DC CCN LDN

05/16/14

I think the biggest problem that I see is using red wine for
Resveratrol intake. There have been a lot of studies showing a "J"
curve benefit to alcohol meaning one glass per day for women and
two glasses per day for men is great however more than that quickly
has negative health effects. Resveratrol can have great effects,
but not if you try to get enough through alcohol. (red wine may
have other polyphenolic compounds that are beneficial in low
alcohol amounts.
@DC Howey, MD, FACE- you are the first person I have ever heard to
say that pharmaceutical companies don't have money to waste....

SRP

05/16/14

Dr. Sorsby & Ms. Meneken, with regards to “finding better ways to motivate patients to do those
things that we know work: better overall diet and more exercise”: May I refer you to the giant, long-
term randomized control trial Look AHEAD? After almost ten years, Intensive Lifestyle Intervention on
diet and exercise resulted in no actual mortality benefits. After that tremendous amount of patient
and health care effort, corpses a couple of pounds lighter and surrogate blood numbers marginally
better, but corpses nonetheless. (See: N Engl J Med 2013;369:145-54.). What is that definition of
insanity, when you keep trying the same thing over and over and expect a different result? Despite
our best intentions, this just does not work. Surely we need to find another course. See also the
recent Medscape reporting on the exercise dose-response curve in cardiac rehabilitation of the
KAROLA trial. All-cause mortality for the >4 times/wk exercise group was the same as for the 1-4
times/month group, and 70% greater than in the 2/wk group. (Heart doi:10.1136/heartjnl-2013-
305242) But, as Upton Sinclair wrote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his
salary depends upon his not understanding it.".

Douglas F Watt, PhD

05/17/14

Websci and
AvidReader are the
only ones pointing
out the essential
truth that makes the
null result
meaningless. Almost
every major
investigator and
reviewer of
polyphenols
(including Sinclair,
Bauer, and many
others who have
investigated
resveratrol and
other stilbenes)
have concluded that
dietary sources
yield low nanomolar
concentrations which
do not significantly
activate AMP kinase
– its principal
therapeutic target,
a kinase which is
very interactive
with SIRT 1 and both
of which promote PGC
1A (the principal
regulator of
mitochondrial
biogenesis). Low
nanomolar
concentrations are
therefore below the
threshold required
for any kind of
protective effect.
All this study
exposes is the
fundamental
ignorance of the
resveratrol and
polyphenol
literature by the
study authors. It's
a bit like people
who research omega-3
and declare a null
result when Omega-3
is compared with
olive oil.
You really need high
nanomolar
concentrations – and
these are only
achievable with
supplementation in
the 100-1000
milligram territory.
Anyone who believes
that this null
result &quot;kills off
another hyped
compound&quot; simply
doesn't know this
area of research
very well. This
study proves
absolutely nothing.
Additionally, the
authors are unaware
that most now
believe that in
relationship to red
wine that tannins
and other
polyphenols besides
resveratrol are
responsible for the
health benefits
attributed to red
wine consumption.
It's sad when this
level of ignorance
permeates research.
This entire study
is frankly a waste
of money and time
because it shows
nothing and
establishes nothing
that we didn't
already know..

Contrarian

05/21/14

The money involved
would certainly
allow us to buy some
very good red wine.
Let's do that. Let's
drink it with
friends and it will
add to our well
being in a way that
pills never do. We
are not going to
live forever
whatever supplements
we take..

SallyC

05/21/14

Interesting review of this study by Bill Sardi at
http://www.resveratrolnews.com/read-279-mindless-news-reports-about-
resveratrol-and-wine-at-google-news/957/
Among the points noted:
1) More than three times as many study participants smoked tobacco
in the heavy wine-drinking group (25.1%) versus teetotalers and
occasional wine drinkers (7.7%). If you adjusted by over 300% for
the mortality rate among the heavy drinkers/smokers (difference
between 7.7% and 25.1%) you would certainly have an advantage for
wine drinking.
2)Those who drank the most wine were half as likely to experience
mental decline over the 9 years of the study. 32% of the teetotalers
and occasional wine drinkers were deemed to suffer with mental
decline over the 9 years of the study versus just 16% among the
heavy wine drinkers.
3)The benefits of wine drinking are attributed to its polyphenol
content as a whole, not just the trivial amount of resveratrol
consumed from wine in this study, which differed by just 1 mg among
the high (3 mg) and low (2 mg) wine drinkers..

Douglas F Watt, PhD

05/22/14

Any time a study
fails to control for
smoking (!), even
more striking in
this day and age,
its conclusions are
at best suspect, at
worst, dead wrong.
This becomes further
evidence that this
is not a neural
scientific study,
but a polemic
disguised as
research. From that
perspective, it is
not surprising that
the authors don't
know that
resveratrol in 1-3
mg range isn't going
to demonstrate
protective effects,
and that other
polyphenols besides
RESV are probably
responsible for the
health benefits of
red wine anyway.
Red wine is not a
good source for this
polyphenol..

SRP

05/26/14

Personally, I am very skeptical of resveratrol, but agree that we have nowhere near the information
necessary to make an evidence-based judgment on it yet and this study certainly doesn't provide much
light. That said, I direct the attention of those interested to a recent analysis of the PREDIMED database
based not on olive oil & nut consumption, but based on individual consumption of polyphenyl class (with
nearly 7,500 diiabetic/pre-diabetic participants and nearly 5 years of follow-up. See Figure 2 of
Tressera-Rimbau, "Polyphenol intake and mortality risk: a re-analysis of the PREDIMED trial," BMC
Medicine 2014 12:77. I note that the Hazard ratio for the highest/lowest quintiles for stilbene
consumption is around 0.50 (and, of course, our favorite stilbene in the Phenol-Explorer database is
resveratrol from red wine consumption...)! Of course, the way they did this, it is probably just the red
wine alcohol and other wine polyphenols....

Epidemiologist

05/30/14

The truth will come from multiple RCTs and not one observational study. Read the study--it is severely flawed.
However, I am agnostic about the true benefits of resveratrol, or potential lack thereof. There is some evidence at
the cellular yellow, I believe using yeast models, of prolonged survival. And that generated numerous biochemical
studies, with a suggestion of benefit. Nothing short of an RCT--probably nested in another cohort--will answer the
question, and even then, I distrust single RCTs--it takes the weight of several well designed studies with large
populations to even be able to do anything more than speculate--smoke and mirrors, as a professor of mine called
it. The bottom line at this point is that the truth is unknown at this point. The study in question will only have
meaning in the long chain of studies to come. Or, if they do not come, the question will be unresolved..

gioacchino aj patuto m.d.

05/30/14

Resveratol is not
the heart saver,
it's the mystery of
the Wine! Bad
research ethics on
the part of
skeptics!!!
It has been a staple
on the table for
italians and others
for thousands of
years. They never
claimed any
benefits. The
Ignorant Americans
are trying to figure
out why others are
Happy and that is
your answer!!! These
antique cultures
incorporate a
healthy life style
with
Happiness-------that
is your answer!!!.

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